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Home » ColumnsTilvin absent at Pelawatte welcome for Chinese Communist Party team
A delegation from the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) visited the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) main office in Pelawatte on Monday, but there was no show by party General Secretary Tilvin Silva to greet them. Instead, Deputy Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sunil Watagala was at hand to greet [...]
No interim budget; billions for rebuilding the country
By Sandun Jayawardana Amid accusations by sections of the opposition that the disaster brought on by Cyclone Ditwah had rendered it “irrelevant” in its current form, Budget 2026 was passed in Parliament by a majority of 157 votes on Friday. Many in the opposition ranks were absent when the Third Reading came up for a [...]
The debris of Ditwah
My dear Mother Lanka, I am writing to you at a time when you are in agony, reeling from the effects of the worst natural disaster you ever suffered. The 2004 tsunami may have killed 35,000 people and the ’78 cyclone nearly a 1,000 but they didn’t leave a countrywide trail of destruction that was [...]
Cyclone Ditwah; system failure, not ‘system change’
Addressing Parliament this week following stinging public anger regarding his Government’s inability to effectively mitigate as well as manage the deadly impact of Cyclone Ditwah leaving hundreds dead, thousands displaced and wreaking unprecedented destruction particularly in the Central and Uva Provinces, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake brushed away alarm over the possibility of emergency law being [...]
Economic impacts of the devastating cyclone and floods
The devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah is immeasurable. Its economic impacts and consequences are manifold. Worse than a tsunami. The devastation caused by floods and landslides this time is more widespread than the ravages of the tsunami 21 years ago. The 2004 tsunami struck only the coastal areas. The Ditwah devastation was island-wide and more [...]
Disaster preparedness and Ditwah: Lessons from nation’s worst storm in years
Cyclone Ditwah, which battered Sri Lanka at the end of November 2025, will cast a long shadow over the country’s landscape, economy, and collective memory. In a matter of hours, what began as an “intensifying weather disturbance” in the Bay of Bengal evolved into one of the most damaging climate events to strike the island [...]
Who sowed the cyclonic wind that the people must now reap?
It’s not the best of times for the Government. It’s the worst. There will not be a rich nation in the foreseeable future, nor will there be a beautiful life for its citizens. The promises made and the grandiose plans still to be laid had been disposed of by the malevolent gods of fate. The [...]
After the cyclone, await the avalanche
For days, if not weeks, Sri Lanka has been under siege due to climate changes that caused death and devastation, as the world now knows. It was a tsunami of a different kind—different from the real tsunami we encountered two decades ago. The loss of life then was decidedly more than what the nation suffered [...]
Govt. battered by post-disaster political storm surge
Foreign Minister Herath refutes allegations Govt. failed to heed early warnings; says Met Dept. failed to raise red alert in early messages Former President Wickremesinghe cites Govt.’s failure to activate National Disaster Plan; convenes opposition politicians to review disaster response; SJB, SLPP absent Ditwah calamity underscores need for separate disaster management ministry; Wickremesinghe proposes Parliament Oversight Committee; [...]
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